Hi.
One thing I would look for is whether any of the legacy LoB datatypes are used in any of the tables, text, ntext and image. I have seen a number of cases where their use, especially on large tables, causes this type of problem, particularly with stats updates.
Try running this;
SELECT
Schemas.name + '.' + Tables.name TableName, Columns.Name ColumnName, Types.Name DataType
FROM
sys.schemas Schemas
INNER JOIN
sys.tables Tables
ON Schemas.schema_id = Tables.schema_id
INNER JOIN
sys.stats Stats
ON Tables.object_id = Stats.object_id
INNER JOIN
sys.stats_columns StatsColumns
ON Stats.object_id = StatsColumns.object_id AND
Stats.stats_id = StatsColumns.stats_id
INNER JOIN
sys.columns Columns
ON StatsColumns.object_id = Columns.object_id AND
StatsColumns.column_id = Columns.column_id
INNER JOIN
sys.types AS Types
ON Columns.system_type_id = Types.system_type_id
WHERE
Types.name IN ('image', 'ntext', 'text')
If so, if you can get back with your results, that'd be helpful
No there are no objects with image or ntext or text.
Thanks for getting back.
Well, that wasn't what I was expecting.
What maintenance tools are you using? First off, can you see if it's the re-indexing or the stats update that's taking longest. If your maintenance tool logs activity (and if it doesn't, I would personally swap it for something that does otherwise troubleshooting consists mostly of guessing) on an object by object basis, can you see which object or objects are taking a disproportionate length of time?
I'm a DBA.
I'm not paid to solve problems. I'm paid to prevent them.